The expert group is soliciting feedback at
jsr-317-pdr-feedback at sun dot com.
Linda promises a follow-up blog entry describing the changes to the Criteria API,
and she also gave a fast (10m) presentation
as part of the GFv3 Prelude launch
(details,
replay,
slides).

Also, recall that the (production-ready) Reference Implementation of JPA will be
EclipseLink - Gordon also gave an overview for the GFv3 Prelude launch
(details,
replay,
slides).

We have been discussing functionality to address this area, and a facility like fetch groups is likely to make it into JPA in future. Due to tightness of schedules, however, it is looking less likely for the 2.0 release. Stay tuned, though....

has there been any discussion of a target release for JPA 2.0. i ask because i am eagerly awaiting the Criteria based query API so that i do not have to hard wire my product to Hibernate or other vendor implementation and i'm finding the string based JPQL insufficient for my needs.